Killer App

24 Jun 2014

A couple months ago, I heard about a slick browser plugin (sadly, available only for Chrome) that replaces the word literally with figuratively for websites, articles, etc. I (literally?) cannot describe just how appealing this is to my inner (and sometimes outer) language bully. Indeed, the thought of the enormous satisfaction sure to follow was almost (but not quite) enough to get me to switch browsers.

More than anything else, though, the story got me thinking of a plugin not yet (so far as I know) developed: Euthanasia. Read more

The Call for More Killing

12 Feb 2014

By the time readers had the print version of last week’s Washington Post Magazine in their ink-stained hands, the online version of its cover story, “Is it more humane to kill stray cats, or let them fend alone?,” had already been revised.

“Julie Levy, director of Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida,” reads the original, “estimates between 71 percent and 94 percent of the cat population must be neutered to bring the birth rate below replacement level.”

“In addition to TNR, she says, caregivers need to stop feeding free-roaming cats and keep pet cats inside for there to be ‘a humane, gradual reduction in cat numbers.’ At one university campus she studied, the feral cat population was reduced from 155 in 1991 to 23 in 2002 through a combination of adoption, euthanizing sick cats, natural attrition and neutering ‘virtually all resident cats.’” [1]

Sometime between Thursday, when the online version was posted, and Sunday, the second sentence disappeared from the Post website. Read more

What’s In a Name?

24 May 2012

In a story posted online Tuesday evening, the L.A. Times reports that a mountain lion was shot and killed after wandering “into the heart of Santa Monica.”

“With news choppers circling overhead, Santa Monica police managed to corner the 3-year-old lion in the courtyard of the [office] complex. Police said they made several attempts to calm what they described as an aggressive feline using tranquilizing darts, nonlethal bullets and a fire hose. When that failed to stop the lion from trying to escape, a police officer fatally shot it.”

I wasn’t there, and I certainly don’t know the exact circumstances of the shooting. Nor do I claim to know when such situations do, in fact, call for lethal measures. (That said, I agree with commenter Corby Baumgarten: “I can’t imagine why the police thought firing nonlethal bullets and spraying a wild animal with a fire hose would calm it down. Have such tactics ever calmed any situation down?”)

What stopped me in my tracks as I read the story was, however, not the all-too-predictable outcome, but the way Santa Monica Police Lieutenant Robert Almada described it:

“A variety of means were used to try to keep the animal back in the courtyard… The animal continued to charge and attempted to flee. It was euthanized to protect the public safety.”

I’m sorry—euthanized? Read more